Dr. A. James Murphy

    Dr. Murphy is Associate Director of the School of American and Global Studies and Associate Professor of Religion at South Dakota State University. He is a biblical scholar and author. Dr. Murphy has worked in Christian Origins, the Hebrew Bible, and Greco-Roman Religions.  Dr. Murphy is a leading scholar on children in the biblical world and text. His book, Kids and Kingdom: the Precarious Presence of Children in the Synoptic Gospels, was published in 2013.

He is currently working on a revision of his manuscript on children in the Gospels provisionally called Children and the Reign of God and a book project on the Single Savior.

Check out his chapter on abortion and infanticide in ancient Israelite/Jewish texts in the Abortion and Religion reader shown here. Other publications include an article on children in Deuteronomy, on child endangerment in Jewish antiquity, and the following publications on children in the hypothetical gospel known as Q.

Check out his chapter "The 'Lost Boys' (and Girls) of Q's 'Neverland'" in the T&T Clark Handbook of Children in the Bible and the Biblical World (right; see Academics page for full citation).

Look for a portion of his initial examination of Q's attitude toward children in the journal Biblical Interpretation (see Academics page for full citation).